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Capacity Planning

Capacity Planning Capabilities at-a-glance

What Questions are You Asking?

Why do Capacity Planning?

"Just throw more cheap hardware at the problem, right?" Well not exactly. That might have worked in simple closed network client/server environments, but with more applications being developed for remote access over the Internet, Intranets or virtual private networks, capacity planning before implementation is critical. But capacity planning is not just about applications, it is really how the applications perform over the infrastructure-both network and application host platforms (servers). For example, your current billing system may perform just fine over a high speed single site LAN, but try to deploy this over a wide area network using costly telecommunication links and it just might not perform as expected. Why? One of the primary reasons is that application developers rarely pay heed to the performance issues when developing. They typically develop on a high speed LAN and if it works fine there, well it works fine everywhere. Unfortunately this is not the case. In our experience, applications using databases are rarely tuned to efficiently retrieve only the information actually a specific query needed from a database. From the perspective of the application host machine, performance of an impact analysis is also critical. Your current HR package may perform just fine on your current sever, but what will be the impact on this server if you add a accounting application to that server? Will it degrade the performance of the HR package and cause the billing system to bog down? In your environment, your applications have become mission critical. Post implementation downtime to address performance problems is both costly and avoidable. A well planned and executed implementation project, be it network infrastructure, application or server, must look at the capacity issues in the planning stages. Ideally if you are considering a new software package, we recommend making performance a key selection criteria. We also encourage, where practical and where no independent performance verification exists, that you test the impact on your current infrastructure before the final selection of the package. If you already own a package and are redeploying it on a new or upgraded server, or you are enabling remote access to this application, then testing the application's performance is warranted. This testing should examine server & bandwidth utilization as this will save you headaches, time and money in the later stages of the project. In summary,  capacity planning, sometimes called resource management and planning seeks to answer the following questions:

Questions such as these need to be answered from the perspective of the network & systems as well as the users and their applications. A formal resource management and planning program often makes sense whenever dynamic conditions exist within an organization such as a constant user base turn-over, network consolidations, new architecture, new technology, new applications, obsolescence of old technology and applications, and when such services are considered business-critical to the operation of the organization.

That is why at L4 Networks, we recommend including capacity planning as a critical task in the project planning process for any new system rollout. It is included in our project methodology under our project management services. It is just one way we seek to meet the objectives of a successful project.  One of the hallmarks of a successful IT project is that the end product works as required. Do not settle for less!